Physician suicide prevention

Abstract

Every year there is a medical school full of physicians who commit suicide. Depression is a major risk factor and physicians frequently fail to recognize their own depression and that or their colleagues. Even when they do, many of them avoid treatment. The greater knowledge of lethality of drugs and easy access to means can contribute to the higher suicide rate among physicians.

Some studies say that training physicians are at particularly high risk of suicide, with suicidal ideation increasing more than 4-fold during the first three months of internship year. In Portugal, there are no reliable statistics about resident's suicide. We do not even talk a lot about it and the collective silence only compounds the problem – the refusal to speak perpetuates the stigma that mental health problems are signs of weakness or failure. Assess existing resources and best practices should be the next step to establish training programs to suicide prevention in these professionals, addressing response programs. As primary prevention, we should act in order to prevent healthy medical students or physicians from developing a condition that would lead to suicide. A randomized clinical trial in US with 199 residents from multiple specialties found that a free, easily accessible, brief web-based cognitive behavioural therapy program is associated with reduced likelihood of suicidal ideation among medical residents.

It is also essential too early diagnose and treat after the illness onset. Moreover, it should exist a rehabilitation of suicidal physicians and their return to maximal function with minimal risk for recurrence.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.